


The Night of the Morning After the Night Before

by RidiculousMavis



Category: Quacks (TV)
Genre: Leading to Caroline/Robert/William, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-25
Updated: 2017-12-25
Packaged: 2019-02-20 05:43:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,513
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13140285
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RidiculousMavis/pseuds/RidiculousMavis
Summary: A discussion about Caroline and Robert's relationship takes a bit of a turn.





	The Night of the Morning After the Night Before

**Author's Note:**

  * For [afterism](https://archiveofourown.org/users/afterism/gifts).



It was the morning after the night before. Robert was nursing a bad head and an equally bad temper. So when he saw William wandering the corridors of the hospital with a pale face and a sore head he invited his friend back home for lunch. 

William himself had been desperately trying to avoid Robert and the paleness was more than a little related to that anxiety. 

Still, he went. After a little hair of the dog they settled to their business, as it had been often of late, concerning Caroline. 

“I observed your behaviour towards my wife last night.” 

William lost a fair few pints of blood into his boots. “Last night?” he struggled to recall. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“She always wants to talk with you and there you are, hanging off her every word.”

William composed himself carefully. “This might come as a shock to you, Robert, but I find Caroline to be genuinely interesting and a first rate mind.”

“It’s not shock so much as confusion. I tell you, William, if she were your wife and not the wife of a friend you would see it very differently.”

“You love her really, I know you do. Your concern not to lose her - that is love.”

“Very nicely divorce would reflect on me if I ever do want to get into the Westminster Medical Club.”

“Robert, it’s not a weakness to love your very extraordinary wife. You married her, after all.”

Robert was rolling his eyes. William continued. “You have much in common. Medicine, your lives together. But even if you are not naturally inclined towards the same subjects you should be interested because your wife is interested. Share her interests and enthusiasms. Caroline is a -”

“Remarkable woman, yes, yes, I know.”

“Well, she is,” William finished weakly, at a loss.

“Tell me, William. Man to man, friend to friend. Magnificent surgeon to… alienist. Have you designs on my wife?”

“No! Robert, I assure you. My only intention is to help you to improve your marriage.”

Robert fixed the writhing William with a stern gaze. “Why?”

William floundered. “I - I have an interest in such workings. A medical interest. And I value your happiness, as your friend.”

“And Caroline’s?”

William swallowed, hard. “I value her happiness too.”

“There!” Robert said, abrupt and triumphant. “You are the most terrible liar and the worst at being a scoundrel. You are in love with my wife.”

“I am not -” William tried to form coherent sentences that might save his skin but self preservation failed him. “I do not -” 

“Deny it and I will call you out.”

“And if I admit it?”

“I will call you out anyway. Are you ready to hear the story of what happened during the war?”

“No,” William replied, very passionately meaning it for once. 

“Very well. So now, with a gentleman’s admission, you will tell me what you have been up to. Have you kissed her?”

William, mortified beyond belief even for someone who had experienced much mortification in his life, could not even begin to decide whether he should try to further evade the truth or make his admissions and hope his honesty could save him a duel. 

Robert leaned in close. “Have you kissed her?” he intoned once more. 

“Yes!” William squeaked. 

“And where did you kiss her?”

“On the hand.” William winced. 

“On the hand, hm.” 

“One time on the wrist!” William blurted out. 

“On the wrist, you don’t say.” 

William, sweating and squirming, risked a hesitant glance at Robert. The demeanour was confusing. Thoughtful, rather than threatening. He waited for Robert to pronounce judgement. 

Instead, Robert said, “And how was that?”

“How… was it?”

“Precisely. How was it?”

“How was… kissing your wife?”

“Yes.”

William couldn’t tell what sort of response Robert would rather hear. “Very… pleasant?” he hedged cautiously. 

“I should hope,” Robert said gravely, “that you would not risk ruin and our friendship over something merely ‘pleasant’ and I strongly believe that you are utterly in love with my wife, so I doubt you can be so cool about the fulfilment of that.”

Thinking about kissing Caroline gave William the most intense, physical sensations. As though he were there, in that moment. When alone these sensations could be most welcome. In this particular context they were very unwelcome. He leaned forwards, crossing his arms over his knees. Really, if Robert meant to kill him it would be a kindness to get it over and done with. 

“No,” Robert continued, looking William up and down, “I see you are actually rather heated about it.”

“I assure you -” William tried to say, wanted to say. But being so scrutinised, by Robert of all people, only made the acute sensations far worse. 

“I begin to suspect,” Robert added, oblivious to whatever William was trying to stutter out in his defence, “that you have not known the touch of a woman.”

“It’s possible I may have misled you, in that regard, into believing I had more experience than I do.”

“People often do,” Robert agreed. “Nor of a man, I assume?”

William choked. “No.” Not that he had not thought about it. And to have Robert question him so calmly was not doing anything to subdue the aforementioned sensations. His body burned, his cock strained within his underwear. William’s mind was entirely focussed on it no matter how hard he tried to turn it elsewhere. 

Robert, fully aware of the effect he was having, and fully aware of his own matching effect, pulled his chair closer to William’s. He held William’s eye as he moved his hand, very slowly, onto William’s knee. 

William looked at it. He looked at it a moment more. Everything seemed to hang in the balance as he decided what he might do about this. What would be prudent, what would be pleasant. What would appease the thundering of blood in his ears and the heat in his body, the all encompassing wanting emanating from his nethers. 

“Perhaps I might kiss your hand, too.” He said it carefully, deliberately. Wanting to make every word right despite the trepidation. 

“Very well.” Robert was nowhere near as dispassionate as he appeared. William, so meek and mild, making so bold, was immensely satisfying to him. 

So William lifted Robert’s hand and kissed it. Not in some formal way but on the palm, holding it gently. As he kissed Caroline’s. With reverence and passion together. 

Robert licked his lips. He allowed himself a brief moment to close his eyes, to really feel. 

William was set on a course now that seemed inevitable and imperative. His body compelled him, or so it seemed. He put his lips to Robert's wrist, then again, pushing up his shirt sleeve. 

“It is indeed very pleasant,” Robert allowed. “I do think it could be much more so, though.” 

“What do you want?” William asked quickly, a needy tone to his voice that was akin to begging. 

This inflamed Robert's quiet interest all the more so that he moved swiftly to put his hand to William's painfully visible erection. 

William exhaled with a whimper and it took only the briefest moment of groping to relieve him of the pressure. 

His face was intently studied by Robert. His fluttering eyelids, the formation of his lips, the strangled noise emitting from them. 

Robert rubbed through William's trousers again, coaxing into life this time. He put his other hand to the back of William's neck and was surprised - and delighted - to find how pliable William had become so that he could be reclined further into the chair. 

Indeed, William was weak, dazed and more than a little confused, but also more than happy to surrender himself. 

Robert drew his hand very slowly back down William's body and felt the quivering and shivering as his body unwound from its tightly coiled position, buttoned up under all those buttons and layers. 

Buttons and layers were dealt with to allow access to William's once more well-stoked cock. 

William moaned and groaned in full voice as Robert knelt and tended to him. Lolling quite limply back in the chair he became rigid as a board and uttered a strained string of profanities at the crucial moment. 

As William flopped back again Robert began his ascent, his erection dragging along William's body, roughly chafing through Robert's clothes. He was full of the most urgent and pressing need himself but William was barely compos mentis after his endeavours. 

Neither of heard the creaking of floorboards or the quiet opening of the door. 

“Gentlemen…” came Caroline’s voice from the threshold. “What do we have here?”

William startled but was pinned by Robert, who looked calmly over at his wife. 

“William has been making confessions to me.”

“Is that so?” Caroline enquired, biting her lip as she slowly removed her gloves. “That sounds like the sort of of thing I ought to be involved with.” It was too delicious and her boys turned eagerly to her as she had approached. 

Thus began the night of the morning after the night before.


End file.
